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12:45 PM ET, September 15, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Facebook Isn't A Social Network.  And Stop Trying to Make New Friends There  —  A controversy is brewing over a popular Facebook application called PackRat, where users collect sets of illustrated cards for points and levels.  The company behind the application, Alamofire …
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Steve O'Hear / The Social Web:
Facebook: no social networking here  —  One of the delightful things about creating a new web application or service is the way in which end users find unintended ways of utilizing said service.  That's a common story we hear from those who've created cutting-edge and disruptive products …
Discussion: TechCrunch and AppScout
Erica Naone / Technology Review:   Turning Social Networks Against Users
Joseph Weisenthal / paidContent.org:
The Next Chapter: Best Buy To Acquire Napster For $121 Million  —  Napster (NSDQ: NAPS) has fallen into the arms of a surprise buyer: Best Buy.  The big-box electronics giant will pay $121 million or $2.65 per share.  Shares of Napster closed at $1.36 on Friday, so this is nearly a double …
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Peter Kafka / Silicon Alley Insider:
Sold! Best Buy Swallows Napster For $121 Million (BBY)
Aja Carmichael / Wall Street Journal:
Best Buy to Buy Napster In $121 Million Acquisition
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Everyone but Apple joins new “buy once, play anywhere” group  —  Buying a movie online is simple; it's watching it on the device you want that's hard.  The movie studios have been reluctant to allow DVD burning from online stores (and when they do, it doesn't always work) …
Discussion: Electronista and jkOnTheRun
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Cliff Edwards / Business Week:
Digital Content Wherever You Want It
Discussion: Beet.TV, Inquirer, Epicenter and NewTeeVee
Robert Andrews / paidContent.org:
Newspapers Around World Oppose Yahoo-Google Ad Deal  —  The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) this morning asked the US Department of Justice, the European Commission and the Competition Bureau of Canada to block the deal under which Google will supply some advertising to Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO).
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Josh Pigford / The Apple Blog:
Giga Omni Media Acquires The Apple Blog  —  In November of 2004, a few months after I got my first Mac (a PowerMac G5), I registered theappleblog.com not really having any big plans of what I'd do with the site.  I was a senior design student in college and just wanted a new site to design and something to write about.
Discussion: paidContent.org
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Om Malik / GigaOM:
Giga Omni Media Acquires TheAppleBlog
Discussion: The Blog Herald and jkOnTheRun
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Wall Street's meltdown and the potential technology hit  —  Folks are waking up Monday to a Wall Street meltdown as Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch and companies ranging from Washington Mutual to AIG are on the ropes.
Discussion: Epicenter and ClusterStock
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Tom Steinert-Threlkeld / Between the Lines:
Gauging Your Own Risk, On This Black Monday
Peter Kafka / Silicon Alley Insider:
WSJ.Com's Redesign Sneak Peek: See Tuesday's Paper Today  —  We don't know what Tuesday's Wall Street Journal will tell us (we're guessing there may be some Wall Street news) but we do know what Tuesday's WSJ.com will look like: A lot like Monday's WSJ.com, but easier to look at.
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Vindu Goel / Bits:
New WSJ.com Builds on Its Community of Subscribers
Discussion: Valleywag and Romenesko
Staci D. Kramer / paidContent.org:
WSJ.com Relaunches During Financial News Meltdown; Glossy New Look …
Noam Cohen / New York Times:
Link by Link: Don't Buy That Textbook, Download It Free  —  SQUINT hard, and textbook publishers can look a lot like drug makers.  They both make money from doing obvious good — healing, educating — and they both have customers who may be willing to sacrifice their last pennies to buy what these companies are selling.
Discussion: Technology Live and Social Media
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
VMware (and Citrix) get cloud friendly  —  Updated: VMware said Monday that it will launch a cloud computing initiative to bring enterprise class service to customers with more than 100 partners.  —  The effort, called vCloud Initiative, will be launched at VMworld in Las Vegas (statement, Techmeme).
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Scott Ferguson / eWeek:
VMware Adds Cloud, Desktop Infrastructure to Its Virtualization Road Map
Discussion: VMware, PC World and WinBeta
Ashlee Vance / Bits:
New iPhone Chip Will Cost an ARM and a Missile  —  Given Apple's super-secretive ways, it's quite a shock to find a company engineer disclosing something about the iPhone's future innards on a public social networking site.  —  Wei-han Lien, the senior manager of Apple's chip team …
Discussion: MacRumors
Yukari Iwatani Kane / Wall Street Journal:
Apple's Latest iPhone Sees Slow Japan Sales  —  Two months after its launch, the latest version of Apple Inc.'s iPhone is showing strong sales around the world — except in Japan.  —  Apple's partnership with Japan's third-largest mobile operator, Softbank Corp., to sell the iPhone 3G certainly created a buzz.
Pallab Ghosh / BBC:
Web ‘must separate rumour’ from science  —  The internet needs a way to help people separate rumour from real science, says the creator of the World Wide Web.  —  Talking to BBC News Sir Tim Berners-Lee said he was increasingly worried about the way the web has been used to spread disinformation.
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Fred / A VC:
Zemanta  —  I wrote this post for the Union Square Ventures blog and it will go up there today, but in the meantime I'll post the news here.  —  Union Square Ventures has invested in a number of blogging related applications and services; Adaptive Blue, Delicious, Disqus, FeedBurner, Outside.in, Twitter, and Tumblr.
Paul Miller / Engadget:
HTC's Touch HD unveiled in very much official glory  —  We're still sans a press release, but a friendly tipster found this quite official page at HTC's very own site, depicting the sexy Touch HD from every angle, with every spec exposed.  The rumors were naturally spot on …
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
Google Chrome Q&A  —  Via email, I've asked Google group product manager Brian Rakowski a couple of questions in regards to Google's web browser.  Chrome has been in development for 2 years... did the initial designs resemble what has been released now, or were there a lot of interface …
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Why MySpace Music is Likely to Fail  —  MySpace Music, a new music service plotted by MySpace and music labels, is likely to debut soon with much pomp and show.  And despite all the pre-buildup hype it is by no means a slam-dunk.  —  Earlier today it was reported that the company is looking …
Discussion: Portfolio and TechCrunch
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 More Items: 
Daimion Pinnock / PlayStation.Blog:
WipEout HD Officially Dated, Priced
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
RIMM: Pacific Crest Says Sept. Sales “Slightly” Weak
Comforteagle / OSDir.com:
Mozilla Demands EULA on First Lanuch: Linux
Discussion: The Register and Hardware 2.0
cellular-news:
T-Mobile Wins Court Injunction Blocking iPhone VoIP Application
Ryan Kim / San Francisco Chronicle:
Mobile device just does e-mail
 Earlier Items: 
louisgray.com:
As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls
louisgray.com:
SiteMeter's Attempted Challenge to Google Analytics Falls Flat
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Podcaster Developer Uses Little-Known “Ad Hoc” Mode To Distribute Banned iPhone App
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Seagate elbowing its way further into consumer backup market
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
How Dropbox ended my search for seamless sync on Linux
Discussion: Digg